


devil i know

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (mention of Eddie's marriage), Anal Sex, Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, Coming Untouched, Consensual Monster/Human Sex, First Kiss, Infidelity, M/M, Monsters, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Other, Outdoor Sex, Overstimulation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Size Difference, Size Kink, Top Richie Tozier, Transformation, Unsafe Sex, Wet & Messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:40:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24818509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It’s there, half shrouded in silhouette against the bright light of the moon, enormous and terrifying, clinging to a tree as it turns its gaze down on Eddie there in the clearing. All Eddie can see, as he stares, transfixed, are its shape and two sets of eyes; one pair of yellow-orange slits, one pair red and rounded, glowing in the dark, pupilless but nonetheless quite clear on what—who, precisely, has drawn its curiosity.Richie undergoes a transformation, and Eddie helps him break the spell.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 43
Kudos: 422
Collections: Anonymous





	devil i know

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags again on this one and decide if it’s something you’re about! BUT SPOILER-Y SUMMARY IF YOU’RE NOT SURE: Richie gets bitten by Pennywise during his token quest, which leads to his turning into a monster and for some reason Eddie has to have sex with him to turn him back. Although Richie is nonverbal this is very much consensual for both parties involved. There really is no logic with this one, and I've played a little bit fast and loose with canon here, it's just that monsters are very sexy sometimes.

“What’s this, Mikey,” Richie says suddenly. It’s going to be a long night in the library, and everyone’s resigned themselves to that fact. Mike’s equipped three of the library’s main tables with titles he’s pulled—anything tangential to Derry, to its secrets. Anything that could help, even a little bit. Anything that could suck up the hopelessness that’s settled over them before it suffocates them all; a point, from Eddie’s perspective, which is coming fast and close. 

The book that Richie’s thumbing through is old and thick—gilded, but fading. Beautiful, probably, once. He’s supposed to be helping Eddie look through maps, but predictably, his attention had wandered. 

“That?” Mike squints at it—and sighs. “Oh, _that_. C’mon, Rich. We’ve gotta focus.”

“What do you mean?” Richie asks, persistent. “This is from your little _It_ section, or whatever. Second question, actually, genuinely—who checks this shit out?”

“There’s nothing in there that’s going to help us,” Mike says firmly, but Richie presses on, undeterred. 

“Humor me.”

It’s with an uncharacteristic seriousness, enough so that Mike looks at him, and the rest of them do too. 

“Okay,” he sighs, finally relenting. “I mean, it’s—sixteenth century, sort of, some _very bored_ eroticist here in Derry came up with this story. It’s not, like. Actually part of history. As far as we know.”

“Oh, right,” Richie says dryly, flicking over to the next page. “It’s not like the _other_ peer reviewed studies you’ve got here, Professor Hanlon. C’mon. Who’s Lord Gresham?

“Alright,” Mike sighs, shutting the book he himself has been parsing and setting it in the _not-helpful_ pile. “As the text reveals, Lord Gresham was bitten by what we today might posit is It, or some sort of manifestation of It, hundreds of years ago, but he got away, and it sort of—it changed him. Temporarily.”

“Like a werewolf?” Bev asks, and Mike shrugs. 

“Sort of.”

“What’s so erotic about that?” Stanley interjects distractedly, eyes still fixed on his own book. 

"You said, _temporarily_ ,” Richie says, studying Mike intently. “How’d he change back?”

“To answer both of your questions,” Mike explains patiently, like they’re at some sort of nightmarish book club, and not discussing a man-eating clown. “He, uh. Had an intense encounter with the...I think it was the gardener, in the state that he was in, and it, sort of. Turned him back? Somehow?” Bill stares, visibly dumbfounded, and Mike holds his hands up. “I don’t know why you’re looking at me! I didn’t write it. Clearly it’s some sort of, like...spiritual unity thing like that book with the orgy we tossed—”

“He _fucked_ the werewolf?” Bill interrupts. “Just so we’re clear.”

“He wasn’t a werewolf,” Mike offers. “He had tentacles, and, uh. Eight eyes…it might be nine. I haven’t read it in ten or so years, I went through this whole phase—”

 _Phase?_ Bev mouths at Stan behind Mike’s back, bewildered. Stan shrugs, placidly, just as Richie speaks up.

“What do you think would’ve happened if she hadn’t turned back?”

Mike frowns, but before he can answer, Bill interrupts. “This is a distraction,” he says, firmly. “We need to focus.” 

“Bill’s right,” Eddie chimes in, and Richie’s slow to turn his gaze on him—his mouth thinned, his face wan. _What’s he got to be so bothered about_ , Eddie thinks, with a prickle of irritation; it’s not like he’s been squinting over thirty or so maps for the past three hours. Speaking of which. “What the _fuck_ happened to helping me with maps,” he demands. 

* * *

It’s the last time Richie speaks up within the scope of the rest of the evening, as far as the group is concerned. Eddie thinks that he’s chagrined by the scolding he’d received, but when Richie’s quiet spell stretches on, Eddie begins to guess that it’s something else—something, maybe, that had happened while he’d earned that token he’d plunked down on the library table in front of the six of them for approval.

And as the minutes tick past, Eddie begins to hate him for it. _What the fuck did you have to go through, Rich_ , he thinks moodily as he watches Richie hunched against the wall of the back of the library, jacket wrapped tight around himself, face grim. _Did you watch your dead mom deep-throat a leper’s tongue? Did you chug three hundred tons of leper puke? Did you get back from said puke chugging session to hose off the puke that you hadn’t chugged—the excess puke, the puke that had gotten on your clothes, and your face, and just about everywhere else—and before you’d even gotten to take a shower, just when you’d done a quick rinse-off, because that’s all you had the time to do, did you get stabbed through the cheek by a homicidal insane asylum escapee with a mullet? Is that what happened, Richie?_

Because it has to be that that’s troubling him presently, obviously—whatever he’d done to earn that stupid arcade token. It would be absurd, of course, for Richie to be suffering through such inner turmoil just from kissing him earlier. A _chaste_ kiss, at that. Closed-mouth, hot and quick, outside of the Town House before the others had joined them out front, cutting it short before Eddie had the chance to reciprocate, or think about it at all.

He’s thought about it plenty now, but Richie hasn’t spoken of it since. Like it hadn’t happened at all. 

“If that’s about it, I’m off for bed,” Richie says suddenly, interrupting Stan mid-sentence; the six of them turn to stare. “You seem like you guys have this handled, and, I mean—you know how Hollywood is. I need my beauty sleep.”

“You can’t just bitch out _mid-plan_ , Richie,” Eddie interjects exasperatedly. 

“I can and I will bitch out. It’s a free country, Edward,” Richie says, and Eddie rolls his eyes. “Bitching out whenever you want to is in the constitution. Mike and Bill know what they’re doing, anyway, you don’t need me.” He’s already on the move, giving the rest of them a wide berth as he skirts the table, although he pauses to survey them from the door as he gets to it—although his eyes come to rest on Eddie. 

Until, that is, they flick over to Ben. “In my absence, Ben,” Richie says, with sombre gravity. “I bestow upon _you_ the responsibility to make shitty jokes and, uh. You know. Fuck the plan up.”

“Hey,” says Eddie, sharply, but Richie’s already gone, shouldering the door open without so much of a look behind him at the rest of them. Perturbed, he stands, reaching for his jacket. 

Bev shrugs. “Let him go,” she says. “He probably just needs a second to get his shit together.”

“ _Mine_ is together,” Eddie says sharply, as he shrugs it on. “Yours is together. We’re supposed to be a team, right?”

He looks to Bill for confirmation, but Bill, having hit his Tozier tolerance for the evening, is a portrait of apathy. It’s getting to be late, to be fair; through the window, Eddie can see dusk settling over Derry outside, the low sun in the sky leaving streams of light and shadow in the wake of the day. 

“I’m going to find him,” Eddie says, determinedly. “And bring him back.”

“Well. What do you call a can opener that won’t work?” Ben asks the rest of them, gamely, as Eddie goes. 

* * *

The air is crisp when Eddie emerges from the library, unseasonably cool, or unseasonably warm, depending on which season one considers it to be—Eddie can’t remember, off the top of his head if it’s _officially_ turned to fall by the calendar. 

Richie isn’t headed back to the townhouse like he’d said that he was. In fact, he’s headed east, into the woods; the opposite way, entirely, and Richie’s walked fast—Eddie, bewildered, is just in time to watch as his figure is swallowed up by the trees.

“Hey!” he calls, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste as he makes his way down the creaking stairs. “ _Rich!”_

His voice rings out across the field, but there’s no answer, and Eddie jogs a little, hoping to catch Richie on the fringes of the forest. He knows the Barrens like the rest of them do—which is to say, not very, really. It’s a little piece of land, topography wise—on paper, at least—but when they’d been kids, it had felt sprawling and endless, densely wooded. Not sinister, necessarily, in the manner that plenty of other things in Derry had taken on, _It_ ’s influence, but mysterious, nonetheless. Unknowable. 

Richie, he hopes, knows what he’s doing, whatever that is. It’s getting dark.

“Richie?” he calls again, hovering at the edge of the trees. There’s no answer. The woods are quiet; even Eddie’s call is quieter than he’d meant for it to be, like the trees had suffocated the sound. When he looks back, he can still see the library from where he stands, easy, and he hesitates.

The right thing to do, he’s pretty sure, would be to go and get the others. But the time that’ll take means that Richie will be deeper in the woods—lost, maybe. Surely he hasn’t gotten far. 

Eddie sets his shoulders and makes a choice. 

* * *

Eddie walks. For five minutes; then ten, then twenty, then some more, stumbling over winding roots, batting his way through thick patches of underbrush. He walks right into a spider’s web, at a certain point, and that barrels him over entirely as he tries to scrub it from his hair with a curse, his free hand clutching at his cell phone, useless. He’d tried Richie a dozen times, at _least_ , but the reception’s fucked out here. 

Both of them are operating at a disadvantage. They’d known the Barrens when they were kids, but it’s not fresh in his memory, and they’d known it during the day—Eddie had, at least, anyway. His mother would have locked him up all summer if she’d known he’d been setting foot in these woods by _daylight_ , as he did. Any nighttime jaunts he might’ve had would’ve been out of the question entirely, and in his mother’s defense, he’s pretty sure they would have been for the rest of them, too, apart from Bev, or maybe Bill, after his parents had other priorities. 

“Richie,” he calls out again, half-heartedly, as he’s done every few minutes or so, with dwindling confidence. At the back of his mind, he’s coming around to the fact that he’s made a terrible mistake here. He’s thought about doubling back, but at this point, he isn’t even sure where _back_ is—he’s not even sure how long he’s been at this. Hours, it feels like, but he’s not sure of it. There’s no sign of Richie, no branches cracked and trod on underfoot that he might have left in his wake. 

No sign of _It_ , either, but at this point, Eddie’s compartmentalized that anxiety neatly. Just for now. 

Instead, Eddie wonders, uneasily, if there are wolves. Or bears. Or badgers. Or, like, _It-_ influenced squirrels, with sharp teeth, or something—

Something in front of him, there in the undergrowth, catches the light of the moon like a mirror. 

It’s the first sign of any bit of humanity Eddie’s borne witness to here, and even if it isn’t Richie, his spirits soar. He scrambles forward, nearly tripping over a stump, and crouches down in the undergrowth, brushing back some winding ivy to find a pair of glasses. 

Eddie stares, and reaches out, hesitantly, so that he can pick them up. They’re Richie’s. He knows this before he picks them up, but it’s a confirmation when he does, and much to his relief, they’re wholly intact—not shattered, or bloody, or in any sort of other unsavory state that might imply that some sort of harm has come to its owner. 

Not that it gives any sort of indication as to where its owner has gone. Eddie looks up ahead of him grimly, glasses in hand, and thinks of Richie out there, somewhere, stumbling blindly through the woods, in search of—what?

 _What_ had he gone looking for?

And it’s starting to rain, too, on top of everything; a solid, heavy drop hits the back of Eddie’s neck with a solid _thunk_ , disrupting his thoughts. Absently, Eddie reaches up to rub at it, and his hand comes away sticky.

The thing about rain is that it isn’t sticky. 

Eddie holds the glasses tight, suddenly frozen stock-still with fear, like a rabbit. A primal, base fear, blowing out each and every one of his senses, so much that it takes every ounce of calculated, human focus that he has to turn his head and look up above him. 

It’s there, half shrouded in silhouette against the bright light of the moon, enormous and terrifying, clinging to a tree as it turns its gaze down on Eddie there in the clearing. All Eddie can see, as he stares, transfixed, are its shape and two sets of eyes; one pair of yellow-orange slits, one pair red and rounded, glowing in the dark, pupilless but nonetheless clear on what— _whom_ , precisely, has drawn its curiosity. 

The teeth crack its face in half, sharp as knives, and Eddie watches, frozen in horror, as saliva drips down from its jaws, down, down, down. 

When it hits his shoulder, it snaps him out of it. 

“ _Fuck,”_ Eddie yelps, scrambling up, glasses clutched to his chest as he sprints, vaulting over gnarled tree roots and ducking under cracked branches. Eddie’s a runner, but he’s never run like this, for his life, not even when he’d been fleeing the leper, and although he’s conscious of his lungs burning as a distant fact, he can’t feel it—he’s numb to everything, physically, emotionally, apart from overwhelming terror. 

He doesn’t know where he’s going. He doesn’t know where he _is_. Distantly, behind him, he can hear the thing thrashing through the bushes in hot pursuit—it’s dropped to the forest floor as it chases him, drawing in closer, and closer still. 

“Richie,” he shouts, desperately. “ _Richie!_ Shitshitshitshit _shit_ —”

He’s not fast enough. Its jaws close over his back—or, well, nearly. Its teeth snap on his jacket, wrenching him forward and as it overshoots him, jacket still clenched in its jaws, the motion peeling him out of it entirely. 

Eddie comes to an undignified halt sprawled at the base of a tree. His palms, he notes distractedly, are scraped raw and bloody, but it’s hard to care much about that, not when the thing is coming back to kill him now, he thinks, looking up, to find...

Eddie squints. 

It’s like it’s forgotten Eddie entirely. Now that they’re in a clearing, he can get a better look at it; its fur, sleek and dense like oil—almost like feathers—is a russet brown, coarse and wiry up its neck and fanning out a little bit at its jaw, up to where it meets its ears, pointed and lupine. It’s not quite a werewolf (and god, to think that Eddie’s already _seen_ a werewolf, that he could distinguish a werewolf from an almost-werewolf), but it’s something like it, although there are some discrepancies. The tail, for instance, is long and feline, thick like a snow leopard’s. Between its ears sit a pair of horns. Sharp, but not nearly as sharp as its teeth look. 

Stranger still, it’s also rolled over onto its back, batting around Eddie’s members only jacket like a cat with a mouse, tail thrashing as a particularly vigorous swipe pitches it up high into the air. It’s as big and as fearsome as it had looked hanging over him in the trees but, dissonantly, it’s also hard to come up with an explanation for what it’s doing with it other than fucking around with it for fun. 

The moonlight catches the fur around its eyes in a strange way, clearing Eddie’s thoughts. It’s not just fur; they’re _scales_ , actually, sort of scattered like freckles, curving up around its eyes. Not brown, but—

Tortoiseshell. 

Not like freckles, Eddie realizes, slowly. Like _glasses_.

Eddie’s eyes drop. There, on its side; an ugly-looking wound, even if it’s starting to heal over, like a bite. He thinks of Richie hunched in the library, jacket wrapped around himself tightly, face grim and pale, and comes to an impossible conclusion. 

“Richie?” he ventures, voice quiet, although the sound cuts through the stillness of the woods nonetheless. The thing goes still, too, jacket caught in its hands—paws—as it peers over at Eddie. Its ears, slowly, go flat with what Eddie imagines to be guilt. 

“Rich,” he tries again, venturing forward, hesitantly, bravely. It hadn’t killed him, and it could’ve just now. Like it doesn’t _want_ to hurt him. “Richie. Is that you?”

The thing draws itself up on its hind legs and looks down at Eddie, and Eddie—his pulse thrumming in his own ears—keeps his ground. Its shoulders hunch, a little awkwardly, and the sudden familiarity of the gesture hits him like a slap to the face. 

And so Eddie knows. “It _is_ you,” Eddie breathes, staggered, shocked. The thing— _Richie—_ ignores him in order to lope off around him, his attention wandering as the letterman’s jacket flutters in the breeze in its hand. Eddie spins to watch him mouth at it with his teeth. 

“Hey,” Eddie barks before he can think otherwise, striding forward, and Richie freezes and looks back at him, cartoonish as his ears prick up. “ _Asshole_. Give me that.” 

Richie gives a huff. Eddie has no reason to know this, but he thinks it looks a little like a laugh, especially when Richie dances out of reach of Eddie’s grasping hand. “ _Hey_ , give it— _drop_ it,” Eddie hisses, stretching for it, and Richie plays keepaway with it for three or four seconds before dropping it to the ground.

Resigned, Eddie crouches to pick it up. It’s drenched with slobber, and pricked through from Richie’s teeth, although with how sharp they are, it’s a wonder that it’s not been torn to shreds. It speaks to the amount of control Richie has, like this, and Eddie might have had the time to be impressed by that if weren’t presently grappling with some more troubling concerns.

“What the fuck did you _do,_ Rich?” Eddie demands, exasperatedly, although that question answers itself, as loudly as the bite mark on Richie’s side does. “Wait. Let’s determine something, here, uh...can you understand me?” Richie blinks one set of eyes, and then the other, studying him intently, which might mean something, or not. “Are you, like, cognizantly, uh—okay. Look.”

Eddie bends to pick up the first thing in reach. It turns out to be a stick, or a fallen branch, and the absurdity of tossing it for Richie to fetch like a dog meanders through Eddie’s thoughts until he shakes it loose. 

He presents Richie with two options; the hand loosely circled around the stick, and the hand with Richie’s glasses, flat on his palm. Richie looks back up to Eddie’s face, the picture of confusion.

“If you can understand me,” Eddie says slowly. “Pick up the glasses. If you can’t, pick up the stick.”

Richie takes the stick from Eddie’s hand and halfheartedly flings it across the clearing before settling back on his haunches. 

“Can you take this seriously, please,” Eddie says tersely, and Richie’s jaw drops so that he can pant—and god, Eddie’s got a good perspective on his teeth. Sharp and gleaming white. “Can you do this one fucking thing for me, Richie, I’m trying to _help_ —”

Dutifully, Richie takes the glasses from Eddie’s palm and they both watch as he sends them sailing across the clearing, too. 

Eddie sighs, rubbing at his temple. “Ha ha _ha_. Very funny, dickhead. You want me to go get it? I’m not gonna be your little bitch, Richie, this is your fucking mess,” he mutters, although he’s already marching over to retrieve the glasses. 

The visible, sheer delight that Richie takes in Eddie’s irritation, with two or three lazy thumps of his tail against the forest floor, answers Eddie’s question anyway. _That’s_ the Richie Eddie knows. 

“Why didn’t you say something at the library?” Eddie demands from across the clearing, fishing through rotting leaves—gross—until he comes up with the glasses scorned. “We could’ve done something.”

There they are. Triumphant, Eddie straightens, glasses in hand. “Let’s go back,” he calls to Richie, where he’s settled across the clearing, dappled with the moonlight as it streams through the trees. “We’ll have to see if Mike knows what to do. Or should I bring him here, maybe?”

But when he looks back at him, Richie’s are flat against his skull; he hunkers down closer to the ground, making himself small, although that’s something of an impossibility in his present state. He doesn’t move a muscle, and it’s clear that he has no intention of going anywhere. 

Eddie blinks. “What?” he asks after a pause, and winds it back, mentally. 

_Why didn’t you say something at the library,_ he’d asked, and with a start, he realized that Richie _had_. While they’d been bickering, Richie had been quiet, paging through Mike’s stack of books, until he’d found what he was looking for, and he’d asked a question.

Eddie thinks of Lord Gresham’s plight and his cure, and he knows, then, that Richie’s thinking about it too. His face colors. 

It’s a second before he can talk. “Okay. Uh. I mean...we don’t know. If _that’s_ what would help,” he ventures haltingly, wrapping his arms around himself. There’s a chill in the air. He doesn’t know if that would help, but...

Within the interest of assessing this particular risk fairly and accurately, he doesn’t know if it wouldn’t help, either. 

Eddie bites at his thumb, pacing, nervous and jittery at even the suggestion of such a thing, as he mulls over his options. 

He comes to a halt in front of Richie and keeps thinking. It’s not an imperative to give _that_ a try, necessarily, Eddie’s like ninety-nine percent certain. He could bring Richie back to the library as he is now. They could figure something out—Bill would figure something out, or Mike. They could fix him in a different way. The library’s enormous; there’s probably volumes and volumes of what to do when one’s friend is bitten by a were-clown. 

Thank god Richie hadn’t turned into a fucking _clown_. Eddie thinks of making love to Pennywise—tenderly, in the missionary position, and promptly pitches that thought out into the stratosphere like Richie had his glasses. He has to focus; he has to problem-solve here. They could try and fix him in another way, like he’d been thinking, but—

—did they have the time, he knows, is the question. If they miss their chance now, they’ll have to wait another twenty-seven years. 

Eddie stretches a hand out and up, hesitant. His fingers sink into the fur at the slope of Richie’s neck, and even if it’s coarse and dense, he can _feel_ Richie go a little stiff at his touch, uneasy, He watches Richie’s nose wrinkle, like he’s not sure if he wants to snarl or not, and Eddie’s heartbeat stutters. Richie’s still _Richie_ , he knows it now, he can feel it, but he can feel it as much as he can sense something wilder still layered on top of Richie as he knows him—something predatory and fearsome, like what he’d seen in Richie’s face as he’d peered down at him from the trees in the dark. 

“So you’re real, then,” Eddie says to cover up for his hesitance, drawing his hand back. He goes to stuff his hands into his pockets, and then he remembers that his jacket is a sad little crumple on the forest floor. Instead—desperate for something to do with his hands, he scratches the back of his neck. “I don’t even know we...how it would work. If we, uh. Tried?”

Richie blinks one set of eyes and then another, and—it’s hard to tell, but Eddie could _swear_ the uneasiness shifts to something like amusement. Richie huffs, and it’s almost like he can hear what he’d say to _that_ in his head. 

“Okay,” Eddie snaps, jabbing at Richie’s furred sternum as he delivers Richie’s almost-certain joke in absentia. “Fuck _you_. I _know_ how it works, asshole, I’m—I’ve _done it_ , obviously, just not with a fucking...not with a were...whatever the fuck you are.” 

Richie pant-laughs again, but the tension’s been eased, at least, by the shitty joke that Richie hadn’t made but surely would have made had he the capabilities to. “Look,” Eddie continues, quiet, with less heat. “We don’t have to, but it’s just—it’s an easy fix. We could just see what would happen. If you wanted to.” He hesitates. “Do you want to?”

It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it. Broadly, sex; and then in an ascending pyramid, sex with men, and then somewhere at the top there sex with Richie. That’s right: sex with _Richie_. He’d thought about it at the Jade of the Orient, towards the end of the night—tipsy off of three gin and tonics, as he’d watched him across the table, his broad shoulders as he’d crossed his arms, his jaw, the glint in his eye that he’d gotten when he had an opportunity to get off a good one in his sights. His smile, his tallness, his wit. 

Eddie remembers thinking—with a strange sort of irritation, at the time—that Richie probably had to beat women off with a stick; that, although any sort of interest in the dating life of a B-list “comedian” was well within Myra’s territory, not his (and god, he’s not going to think about Myra, not now), he could only imagine the hot young twentysomething eager to be Richie Tozier’s midlife crisis. 

And he had, quite luridly, until Richie had kissed him. 

Then Eddie had luridly imagined some other things, later that night; but mostly how he’d have reacted, if he could’ve done it again, if he could do it over, if he’d hadn’t frozen up and wrecked it with a complete and total lack of responsiveness. 

But that’s not what any of _this_ is about. This, Eddie tells himself, really is about saving Richie—and this _is_ Richie in front of him, somewhere underneath the teeth and fur. Eddie can see it, even as he is now. 

Richie takes another step closer, and then another, slow, careful, eyes locked on to Eddie, all four of them. It’s unsettling that he doesn’t have pupils, Eddie thinks, absurdly—because of _all_ things to object to here—before Richie folds himself down a little bit so that he can nose at Eddie’s throat. He’s not quite conscious of his own size like this, and Eddie’s forced to stumble a pace or two back from the weight of his head alone.

“Hey,” Eddie says weakly, but leaves it at that. He can feel Richie inhale, like he’s picking up his scent. Richie hasn’t answered him yet; not that he _could_ , physically, but he can sense that Richie is considering it.

He can feel one of Richie’s hands settle at his waist, then—and it’s _huge,_ enough to wrap halfway around his midsection. His nails prick into Eddie’s skin, sharp through the soft cotton of his polo shirt, and Eddie’s breath catches in his throat as he can feel Richie’s sharp teeth graze at his neck, glancingly. Not on purpose, he thinks.

“Watch it,” he croaks, but Richie’s attention has meandered elsewhere. He drops his head to nose at the collar to his shirt, like he’s curious about the buttons; gingerly, he teeths at one until Eddie swats at his nose, lightly. “ _Hey_. Don’t even think about it, that’s Tom Ford, you already fucked up my jacket.”

There’s a rumble low in Richie’s chest—not a growl, another laugh, and he urges Eddie down to the forest floor, unbalancing him, but keeping him steady with the hand around his midsection. The hand _around_ his waist, god, because Richie is huge, huger still, it seems, when he has Eddie sprawled down on the ground, looming over him like this. 

Here’s the answer that Eddie had been looking for, he realizes, just as much as he realizes what he’s going to do. What _they’re_ going to do. He peers up at Richie, silhouetted and hunched over him, and knows they’re going to have sex. Eddie’s going to have sex with _Richie_ , here, in the woods. Also, Richie’s transformed into some sort of were-dog-goat-cat-thing. 

Life, Eddie thinks, really has its twists and turns. 

“Do you think I could just...jack you off? Would that work?” Eddie wonders aloud, voice high and nervous. “Although I mean, uh, if it _didn’t_ work, then I’d have jerked you off, and _then_ we’d have to have sex in addition to that, effectively doubling our...collective workload here, _oh!”_

Richie’s gotten his nose under the bottom of Eddie’s shirt now—and it’s a shock, cold and wet against his front. “What the fuck are you doing down there,” Eddie hisses, propping himself up a little bit so that he can see; the horns, he fears, will leave holes. But, apparently satisfied with what he finds under there, Richie’s progress meanders downwards, and before Eddie can stop him, he gives the crotch of Eddie’s pants a gross, wet lick. 

It’s disgusting, objectively. Like this, Richie’s tongue is big and thick, dripping with saliva, and he’s soaked through to his boxers the second time he does it. But it’s an unambiguous answer to Eddie’s question, at least, and while it _is_ disgusting, it’s—

—something else, along with that. 

There’s a nip in the fall air, but Eddie’s face is burning hot. This shouldn’t be _interesting_ to him, he tells himself frantically. This is an act of altruism; Richie’s not himself, even if it’s just on a physical level, and Eddie is meant to be helping him here, not getting _off_ on this. Guilty, he swallows. 

“Richie,” he ventures, propping himself up on his elbows. “Rich. You don’t have to, uh, warm me up, we could totally—”

Richie ignores him entirely in favor of catching the waistband of his slacks in his teeth and tugging, first curiously, and then with a little bit more force, threatening to rip them entirely like he had Eddie’s poor jacket. 

“Hey!” Eddie says hastily, bringing up his knee to keep him at bay. Frustrated, Richie huffs. “Hey. Okay. _Okay_. Let me just…”

Eddie reaches down to fumble with his zip, as Richie watches, quiet, focused, contemplative. Objectively, it’s a horrifying sight—those four eyes burning bright in the dark, Richie looming and imposing as he’s hunched over Eddie, but as Eddie looks at him now, he thinks of how Richie had looked at him in the hallway outside of the Town House after he’d had kissed him, drunk and impulsive and hot for him. Even transformed, it’s a familiar hungriness that Eddie sees now in Richie’s gaze, and he wonders, as he hooks his thumbs into his slacks and underwear and pushes them down his thighs, what might have happened had the rest of them not been so quick to join the two of them. 

He only gets them halfway down his thighs before Richie’s nudging in closer, ducking his head to nose at Eddie’s cock, which is far more interested in all this than it ought to be, traitorous to the notion that this is meant to just for Richie’s sake. 

“Teeth,” Eddie manages in warning, voice strangled, as Richie drags the flat of his tongue up the length of his cock—it’s an overwhelming sensation, unlike any form of oral sex Eddie’s received, because Richie gets all of his cock and then some with a single swipe, all the way up to his abdomen. His cock is the last portion of his anatomy that he’d like anywhere near those sharp teeth, and as Richie glances up at him, panting, Eddie gets a front-row-seat to each and every single one of them: incisors, canines, bicuspids, he thinks, distractedly. Capable of working their way through flesh and bone like butter, Eddie’s pretty sure, from the looks of them. 

But Richie’s careful as he works, _gentle_ , making certain that the only portion of his mouth in contact with Eddie is his tongue—hot, wet, slick as he continues to lick at him. By this point, Eddie is achingly hard, red and straining, so there’s no use in pretending like he doesn’t like this, even if this isn’t _meant_ to be about Eddie’s pleasure.

“ _Richie_ ,” Eddie gasps, fingers digging white-knuckled into the forest floor underneath him. He’ll have to scour his nails after this if he wants to get rid of the dirt. “I don’t think—it’s, uh, _good_ , but you’re sure you’re cool with—”

As an answer, Richie settles a paw on Eddie’s chest, keeping him pinned to the forest floor, and that gesture in itself, inexplicably, makes Eddie gasp and buck up against the heat of Richie’s tongue—how easily Richie does it, keeping him where he likes him, how careful he is with his strength. He’d let him up if he struggled—Eddie _knows_ this, trusts him—but it’s hot, to be powerless, like this; the adrenaline from any sort of primal fear he might have at the immediate sensation transmuted into excitement here, something in the push and the pull between harshness (Richie’s nails as they prickle through his shirt; Richie’s teeth, grazing at the inside of his thigh as he angles his head just so) and tenderness (the heat in Richie’s gaze; the way he works his soft pink tongue). 

Eddie presses a shaking hand to his mouth, biting off his own groan as he grinds up again, half-conscious of a low rumble coming up from Richie’s chest as he continues to work, languid and hot, lapping up to catch Eddie’s precome in his mouth. It’s like he’s purring, and Eddie can’t just hear it; he can _feel_ it, too, all the way up to reverberate in his own chest, and more importantly—and more crudely—he can feel it in his dick. 

Richie leans in a little closer, and one of his horns digs into his belly. They’re not sharp, but it’s a blunt reminder that Eddie is pinned, _overwhelmed,_ and inexplicably, it’s that that has Eddie coming with a shout, and Richie presses his tongue to him firmly as he does it, keeping his cock caught between his own body and enveloped, almost entirely, by that slick heat.

It has Eddie seeing stars. He’s never come like this, and he’s overwhelmed, almost to the point of tears, and overstimulated, because Richie’s slow to pull away, although that doesn’t stop him from missing it when he does. 

“Oh, fuck,” Eddie croaks, ineloquently, when he can talk, a little embarrassed by his own performance, like this is some sort of _normal_ sexual encounter in which he’d come too soon. “Oh. Richie. Shit. Sorry, I. I didn’t mean to.” 

Dazed, he props himself up further to peer down at Richie. Any evidence of his orgasm, apart from Eddie’s softening cock, has been tongued away and swallowed entirely; he watches as Richie licks his chops clean, and when Eddie’s eyes trail down further, he can see a flash of bright color underneath Richie, half obscured by the way he’s positioned—and what that _is_ , Eddie can make an educated guess about. 

Eddie shifts up, to get a better look at it, and swallows.

Hesitant—still catching his breath—he pushes Richie up off of him, up onto his haunches, just enough so that he can see it unobscured. Like the rest of him, Richie’s cock is unambiguously inhuman, yellow-orange like honey, long and thickest at the base. It glows faintly, like his eyes do, something that Eddie is sure Richie would find tremendous amusement in if he were to have retained his powers of speech. 

_Dark as fuck in here, huh, guys? Should I get my dick out? It’s like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, except it’s Richie the yellow—_

Resisting the urge to groan in irritation at imaginary-Richie in his head, Eddie sits up, reaching up, tentatively, to grasp Richie’s cock a little bit clumsily at its base. Just to see what it’s like. He can hear Richie exhale, going still. 

It’s hotter, he thinks, than a human’s is. Not that he really has much of a mean, median, or mode here. Just his own, for reference, which isn’t much like this at all. In more ways than one, although one difference is particularly overt. 

“Is that...I-I don’t know if that’s going to fit in me. It’s really big,” Eddie says hesitantly—before he can just _think_ of what Richie would have to say to that, and he continues on in a rush, already defensive. “I’m _normal size_. Average height. In most parts of the world, which I outlined for you previously. If you round up a little. It’s just…” Eddie draws his hand up, and bites his lip. “Even for a normal person, it’d be...”

There’s a rumble in Richie’s chest as Eddie gives it another slow, experimental stroke. It’s slick all over, he thinks absently, still caught in a post-orgasmic lull; it makes his hand’s progress easy, more wet than sticky, although still a little bit of the latter.

“I mean, I guess we can see,” Eddie says. hoarsely. “I think. It’s, uh. Tapered. Like this.” He draws his hand up further, and further to the tip, until Richie thrusts up lazily. Eddie swallows. “Which would help,” he concludes, tearing his eyes away this time so that he can glance up at Richie. “Physiologically.”

Richie blinks. It’s not like he can answer verbally, but he looks like he wants to. Eddie wonders, distractedly, if he’ll remember any of this, and he’s not sure which is the way that he’d rather it go. 

His thoughts scatter as Richie crowds in closer, and then closer, surprising Eddie with a long, wet lick up the column of his throat, earning an indignant squawk. “ _Richie_ ,” he protests, pushing halfheartedly at his nose, although he lets Richie push him down until he’s flat on the ground again. His back is probably filthy, he thinks distractedly. Is the dry cleaner’s in the same place that it used to be in Derry? He can’t remember. He forgot Richie, and he forgot where the fucking dry cleaner was, too—

Richie’s dick bumps up against his slacks where they’re bunched down around his thighs, and the fabric is, apparently, coarse and unpleasant, because Richie huffs frustratedly, although that settles into something a little more satisfied-sounding as he adjusts so that he can grind down against Eddie’s bare flesh; what’s closest is his cock, and _there’s_ a spark of interest at that, the feeling of it, slick and foreign. 

Richie’s eyes slit with pleasure, and he goes up further so that he can push the head of his cock against the flat pane of Eddie’s belly, pushing the shirt up with it as it goes, leaving it wet in splotches with precome, or...whatever that is. Like this, he can get a visual sense of just how deep it’ll go in him, Eddie thinks hazily, as he looks down at where it’s come to rest, nudged up against his belly.

“I should probably, uh,” Eddie croaks, voice high and tight. It’s as much explanation as he can really manage, and it’s a relief that he doesn’t have to muster up the energy to clarify further; Richie lets up on him when he moves to turn to his front. 

It’ll be easier this way, probably, Eddie guesses, his elbows digging into the grass. It smells like rain a little bit, which it has recently, although thank god it isn’t damp here on top of this. Eddie already feels _plenty_ damp—from Richie’s careful ministrations earlier, from his cock now, dripping enough so that it hits the small of Eddie’s back and pools, something that makes him grimace, although it solves a logistical problem, now that Eddie thinks of it. 

“Just hold off a sec,” Eddie says hastily. “Lemme…”

Eddie doesn’t explain this either; he just does it, reaching back behind him to swipe his fingers through the mess that Richie has left. Richie is still and silent behind him, just a warmth at his back, but Eddie wonders if he’s watching as he slots a finger into himself, then works in another, his breath catching as he does it. It’s filthy, to use _this_ to prep himself, he thinks, and surely there are some wires crossed in his head because the thought makes him flush with heat.

If Richie _is_ watching—he’s probably wondering why Eddie is well-practiced at this, particularly when Eddie’s spent fifteen years within the confines of a traditional and sexless heterosexual marriage. And it’s not a lie. Those fifteen years came with a good bit of frustration; _he’s_ not sexless, contrary to what Richie might have guessed at, and he’d had to come up with more than a few ways to bide the time. 

“I don’t want to fucking hear it,” Eddie bites out, like Richie’s actually raised the question. “Ever heard of _prostate massage_. It’s good for you. Look it up on Web-fucking-MD, nnh—”

He’d practically just come, but he knows what he likes best—it’s muscle memory, at this point—and he bites his lip as he brushes up against precisely the right spot. It’s on the edge of too much since he’d just come, but not so much that the urge to dwell on this has absented itself, and he’s slow to pull his hand away. 

Behind him, Richie keeps quiet and still. Eddie fumbles blind behind him, reaching to catch Richie’s cock in his hand, and that earns him a low, pleased growl and a thrust up into his fist. 

“Quit it,” Eddie says, exasperated. “I’m trying to…”

His shoulder aches. He’s too old for this, he thinks—like there’s some sort of appropriate age to be having sex with one’s former-childhood-friend-turned-chimaeric-monster in the middle of the woods. If there is one, Eddie thinks, it’s probably not forty. 

But Richie’s stilled enough so that Eddie can guide him where he wants him. Eddie bites his lip as he feels the blunt head of his cock nudge up against him, finally pushing inside when Richie cautiously arches forward. It’s right that it being tapered helps; he’s slick enough so that it doesn’t feel much different from his fingers, even. Eddie releases him so that he can steady himself with both elbows on the ground. 

“Slow,” Eddie cautions, and Richie gives the back of his neck a conciliatory lick before obeying, starting to push in carefully, a little bit at a time, just as it occurs to Eddie that they’re having sex. 

They’re having _sex_. He’d met him again and handful of days ago, and now—even if it’s in this state—Eddie is letting Richie fuck him, or he’s going to eventually, because it’s hard to qualify this as _fucking_ quite yet as it stands. He’s slow, steady, unceasing as he presses in. Little by little. It’s more than his fingers now, though. More than he’s ever taken. A little staggered by this knowledge, Eddie ducks his head down, shutting his eyes. 

“How much is that,” he asks, hoarsely, although he knows he won’t get an answer. Probably not very much, since Richie’s barely been at this a handful of seconds. It doesn’t feel bad yet, but it doesn’t feel good, either; what Eddie’s most conscious of right now is the _heat_ , of Richie on top of him, the huff of breath against the back of Eddie’s neck, of Richie’s cock inside of him, burning him up from the inside out. Eddie can feel the sweat at his temples. 

More, and then it’s finally just on the edge of uncomfortable. He squirms a little, knees sliding apart as best as he can do it, hobbled by his pants like he is. It had probably been a mistake to leave them on—he’s now far past whichever bit of his sensibilities that had kept him from disrobing in the middle of the woods.

Eddie exhales shallowly, and breathes deep. “Why the fuck do you need all this,” he manages, voice a little strangled, and Richie does that growl-purr he’d done before; Eddie has no idea, but he sounds a little smug, especially when drops his head to nose at Eddie’s hair, teeth grazing at his ear teasingly. He’s not sure what he’s got to be so smug about, because Richie isn’t this big when he isn’t like _this_ , obviously—

—although Eddie wonders, distractedly, how big he is when he’s not like this.

It’s a fleeting thought, because Richie gets a little overeager, pushing forward; it makes Eddie gasp and grip at the grass underneath him to steady himself. It’s an ache, but not a bad one necessarily—Eddie feels hot and full, pinned and helpless. Hazy but curious, Eddie wriggles his hips a little, and sucks in a breath when it makes Richie’s cock shifts in him just enough to send a spark of arousal coursing through him. 

“Fuck,” Eddie groans. He doesn’t sound like himself—ragged, a little slurred. Distractedly, he fumbles behind him, curious to know how much he’s got left to go, but there’s at least enough so that his fingertips don’t even brush against Richie’s furred abdomen. “ _Christ_.” 

Another half-inch, and then an eternity, until finally— _finally_ —Richie’s through. It’s been minutes since he’d closed his eyes, and Eddie blinks them open, taking stock of how he feels. Richie’s flush up against his back, taking some care not to crush him to the forest floor, although some of that’s inescapable with the respective difference between their sizes. But he can _feel_ that Richie’s tense on top of him, keeping himself careful and still, like he’s worried that Eddie will break if he’ll move. 

Eddie’s knows that he isn’t going to break. The shape of Richie’s cock, like this, and how slick everything is has worked in his favor. It’s a tight fit—Eddie feels like he can scarcely _breathe_ —but it’s a fit anyway, and Eddie wonders at that, flushing at the thought of all of that inside of him. Of getting fucked in the woods, like this. 

Of the fact that he’s getting off on this. 

Because he’s hard again, which is an embarrassment. It’s impossible to ignore that when Eddie slips his hand down to feel at his abdomen to see if he can get a sense of how deep in him he is—he can’t, obviously—and the head of his own dick bumps up against his hand, straining. Harder than he was before, even. Eddie exhales shakily and gives in the urge to give himself a clumsy stroke, and then another one.

“Richie,” he says hazily, and Richie takes that as his cue to move; rocking into him slow and shallow at first, testing at how Eddie feels, how much he can take. He keeps his nose buried in Eddie’s hair as he does it, and Eddie can feel him inhale deeply, taking in as much of his scent as he can—another reminder of how fucking _bizarre_ this is, Richie’s overt inhumanity, how one of his horns nudges up against the back of Eddie’s head as he moves, the way that one clawed paw comes to settle heavy and easy on Eddie’s forearm, keeping him where he needs him.

And Eddie feels small. He doesn’t usually, contrary to certain assertions that others might’ve made, but it’s hard _not_ to like this, with the heavy weight of Richie at his back, enveloping him almost entirely. When another thrust jostles Eddie forwards, one of Richie’s hands slips down to clutch at his hip, keeping him there, keeping him steady, sharp nails digging into the soft skin there like pinpricks. 

Another thrust, and this one is _good_ , just at the right angle, exactly right, so much so that it drags a whimper from Eddie before he clutches at his mouth, embarrassed by the sound of himself. It hasn’t, however, escaped Richie’s attention, because does it again, just _so_ , and then again, until Eddie can hardly think, his head swimming. 

Richie’s picked up the pace. he’s fucking him in earnest now, each thrust nudging Eddie into the dirt and the grass, the forest still and quiet around them in a way that makes it the sounds they’re making overt, apparent, and obscene: the too-wet _schlick_ as Richie pumps into him; an occasional _mmph_ from Eddie, muffled by his hand; Richie’s panting, not quite human, not quite not. 

He wonders dazedly what Richie sounds like when he has sex. He wonders if he keeps his glasses on. He wonders how he likes it; from the back, like this, or if he prefers having eye contact. He wonders what he looks like with his shirt off, now that he’s filled out as an adult, those broad shoulders, and as the wedding ring that circles his ring finger digs bluntly into his mouth with a rough thrust he wonders if they’re going to do this again. 

Suddenly Richie _slows_ —like he’s caught on to the angle that’s making Eddie squirm the most, the spot that makes Eddie bite down into the meat of his palm with a choked-off sob. He’ll have a mark there, he thinks wildly. He’ll have to treat it. The human mouth is filthy. Richie hunches in so that his wolf-jaw is tucked against Eddie’s cheek, like he can’t bear to leave a single part of Eddie without contact, as he grinds into him again, again, _again—_

—and Eddie comes untouched. He’s _never_ done that, certainly not like this, overstimulated, overwhelmed by the sheer pleasure of it, enough to leave him gasping and tearful. Richie, he says, or tries to say, or thinks about saying, because his powers of speech have abandoned him entirely. He clutches at the grass—now slick with his own come—with the free hand that’s underneath him as Richie works him through the aftershocks, patient, dogged, and persistent, until Eddie can’t bear it anymore. 

“Alright!” Eddie croaks, scrabbling to steady himself properly, finally. “Richie—you have to—c’mon. We gotta—I-I _can’t_ , again, I have to get you out of here, please—”

Richie either obeys or senses that two orgasms is as much as he’ll be able to wring from Eddie, and abruptly, his thrusts lose some of their carefulness. It’s a rougher, quicker pace, enough to knock Eddie back down onto his elbows. Richie thinks of his own pleasure, finally, as he ought to have been before, and if Eddie had been about ten years younger, he might’ve rallied again, because it’s different and _good_ to be fucked like this, too, overwhelming in a different sort of way, but as he is now, Eddie’s _spent_. 

Richie’s thrust stutter soon enough, though, and there’s something different about the way that he buries himself into Eddie to the hilt, something that had seemed like an impossibility before, although it’s hard to think about _before_ when all of Eddie’s senses zero in on the sharp pang of Richie’s teeth as they sink into the curve of his shoulder. It’s pain, but a grounding pain, and leaving Eddie’s clear-headed as Richie growls and comes, spilling inside of him as deep as he can get.

It feels like it takes him an eternity. Richie thrusts again, after what might be some minutes or some hours, but he does it differently now; slow, languid, lazy, like he’s trying to work it into him, until finally Eddie can feel Richie start to go soft, and he can then sense Richie’s reluctance as he begins to withdraw, although he’s careful as he does it. 

It’s a strange feeling when he’s through. Eddie feels sated in a way that he never has, hollowed-out, fucked-out, and _worn out_ all at once, soaked through in exhaustion to his bones, so much that Eddie can’t muster up the energy to pull himself up from where he’s slumped quite yet, although he starts to return to himself as he picks up on the faintly disgusting sensation of Richie’s come dripping down his thighs, thick and copious. 

Eddie flushes, and somehow manages to flop over onto his back, sliding up a knee so that he can fumble for his jeans sluggishly. He’ll take a bath after this, he tells himself, as he peers up at the canopy of the moon and the stars above. Three baths. Scalding hot. If Pennywise decides to take that opportunity to pull his little bloody tub charade like he had with Bev so many years ago, Eddie will just pull him out of the drain by his shitty red hair and dropkick him through the third floor window. And Richie…

And _Richie_. Essentially dressed (he’s resigned himself to burning these clothes after this), Eddie sits up hastily, although it makes him wince. Richie’s still there, but he’s hunched back against a tree, clutching at his face with his hands, shoulders rounded. 

Alarmed, Eddie gets to his feet. “Richie!” he calls in a panic, and although he’s a little wobbly in the state that he’s in, he stumbles forward until he comes to a halt just in front of him. “Rich,” he ventures, cautious as he stretches a hand out, leaving it hovering without touching him. He still sounds hoarse, and— _god_ , he aches all over. “Did it—are you okay?” 

_Did it work?_ is the question. Gently, Eddie reaches for one of Richie’s wrists, to pull his attention back to him, probably—but when he does it, Richie’s fingers slip apart enough so that one eye can peer back at Eddie through them. 

Not yellow like it had been before: blue. And a pupil, indistinct, but darkening. And as Eddie stares back, wide-eyed, Richie cracks his jaws open to delicately deposit a single, slobbery sharp tooth into Eddie’s palm.

Eddie recoils. “ _Gross!”_ he exclaims, and Richie unfolds himself with a huff that sounds more like a laugh than any sound he’d made in this form so far. When he grins at Eddie, Eddie can see another gap or two where a second set of teeth are growing in, blunted and human, not like they’d been before—and that’s a little bit horrifying, but mostly, it’s an overwhelming relief. 

It’s working, _fast_. Richie lurches forward and nearly loses his footing, like his balance is off. Eddie has to rush to catch him as best as he can, scrambling to wind an arm around his shoulders so that Richie is half draped over him, ignoring his own body’s protests. It’s awkward to hold him up—Eddie can barely manage it, as big as he is, but it’s not lost on him that Richie’s already smaller than he’d been before. 

And with that realization, the woods around them change. Not physically—not _visibly_ —but something shifts in the air, and as it does, some sort of strange, primal alarm sound rings out in Eddie’s head. Something, he thinks, is wrong here. The woods are quiet around them like they’d been before, but for the first time, Eddie is reminded of a tomb. 

Their time here, Eddie senses, is up. 

“Okay,” he says hastily. “Shit. We have to—I think we should leave right now. C’mon. We have to move.” 

He doesn’t wait for Richie to answer; he’s pretty sure that he can’t yet, anyway. Instead, he sets off, half-limping, half-dragging Richie, making slow but steady progress. He’s setting off blind, but in that moment, with a distinct clarity, Eddie _knows_ that they’ll make it out of woods as long as he’s sure that they will, and so when Eddie continues on, he does it determinedly. 

And as they go, Richie keeps changing.

It’s his hands first. The sharp nails are pushed out of their beds and scatter to the forest floor, one by one, one or two _plink_ ing onto a gnarled tree root as Eddie carefully guides the two of them over it. Mostly focused on the journey ahead, Eddie’s not able to take note of what’s happening to Richie, but as they go, he picks up on it in bits and pieces; when his fur starts to shed in patches, the horrible, terrible popping sound as that wolflike jaw begins to reform and recede. 

**_EDDIE_ ** **,** Richie groans suddenly, at a certain point. The sound nearly makes Eddie stumble over his own feet. It’s not Richie’s voice, but it’s _like_ it—deeper, clumsier, like he’s talking around something in his mouth. Maybe a mouthful of sharp teeth. **_EDDIE. EDDIE_** _._

“Yes, that’s me,” Eddie manages, to cover up his shock. “Good job. Now shut the fuck up, I’m trying to focus.”

Richie does shut the fuck up, but only for a second or two before he continues on. **_BRAIN. FEELSLIKE_** **.**

And then he goes quiet again. They’ve been making steady progress; with every step that they take, Eddie’s a little calmer. It’s hard to explain, but he knows that he’s going the right way—that he just has to keep going. “What,” he says, finally, resigned to humoring him, because maybe a distraction is what Richie needs. 

There’s another pause, like he’s still thinking. **_SCRAMBLEDEGG_ ** **,** he settles on, finally.

“You can’t feel your brain,” Eddie points out as they shuffle through a gap in a thicket of trees. “There are no pain receptors,”

**NOT pain. Scrambledeggs.**

“You don’t have scrambled egg receptors, either. I really didn’t think that I had to make that explicitly clear,” Eddie says, and Richie laughs, a _real_ laugh, so much so that Eddie finally begins to relax. “Are you okay?” he ventures, after a pause. 

**Getting there.**

“Good.” Eddie keeps his eyes forward, trained ahead—the trees are starting to become sparse, which is a good sign. They’re close. They’ll be out soon, he’s sure of it. “Do you remember?” he can’t keep himself from asking, quietly, with as much nonchalance as he can muster. 

Another pause. “Yeah,” Richie says neutrally, and he sounds so much like himself—and he _feels_ so much like himself, so that Eddie wonders what he might see if he were to turn his head.

But for the first time since he’d run from Richie, Eddie gives way to cowardice, and he can’t bring himself to do it. In fact, Eddie shuts up entirely. The two of them, for the rest of their journey through the woods, go quiet, but for the snapping of the branches underneath their feet. 

* * *

Richie has a change of clothes in the car he’d left parked at the library, which is a good thing, because Eddie has no intention of driving through Derry with Richie waving naked and cheery at the pedestrians they pass—although if they hadn’t picked up on their status as the child murder capital of the world, Eddie’s pretty sure they wouldn’t pick up on a naked guy driving a car, anyway, so it’s not like it would matter much.

When they get to the town house, they’re met with fury on all sides. It turns out that the rest of the Losers had reconvened there after as comprehensive of a search through the town as they could muster in the dark—three to two, they’d decided that surely Richie and Eddie had both been eaten, and the scolding that they receive from Bill when Richie explains that they’d had a fistfight in the woods over Richie’s shirking of his map duties makes Eddie hang his head with shame, even if it’s a fiction. 

It explains the state of Eddie’s clothes, though, and everyone—thankfully—is too preoccupied to realize that Richie’s changed entirely. Only Stanley studies them with skepticism, at least until he’s pulled away by a call from his wife, and Eddie makes a mental note to send her an edible arrangement or something if all of them aren’t dead by next week. 

Eddie showers and then bathes until he’s used up all of the hot water—for the whole Town House, probably—and he doesn’t feel the slightest bit sorry about it. He’s in his pajamas and toweling his hair dry, ready for a well-earned night of sleep when there’s a knock at his door. 

“Come in,” he calls. He has a good guess of who it is before he even sees Richie sidle in through the door and shut it behind him in the mirror, like he’s trying not to wake the others. He’s still in the clothes that he’d changed into in the car, as Eddie had looked away deliberately, eyes back towards the woods.

Richie’s quiet as he draws closer to Eddie, until he comes to a halt behind him, and raises up a hand to skate his fingers gently across the angry red teeth marks that peek out from the wide neck of Eddie’s t-shirt. 

“I really did a number on you, here, huh,” he says absently, and Eddie blanches, twisting to look at it as best as he can as Richie withdraws his hand. 

“Oh. _Fuck_ ,” he swears, horrified. He hadn’t even thought about it. “Am I gonna…”

“Nope,” Richie says, transparently unbothered in a way that’s reassuring. “Mine had already gone all green at this point, I think it’s just a regular bite. I don’t think I can, uh. Pass it on.” 

The floorboards creak as he crosses back to Eddie’s dresser. There sits the tooth that he’d spat into Eddie’s palm—he’d kept it clutched in his hand the entire journey back without even realizing it, along with Richie’s glasses.

Richie pinches the tooth between his index finger and thumb, careful to avoid its sharp edge as he peers at it curiously for a second or three. “You liked it,” he says suddenly, eyes still fixed on the tooth as he holds it up to the light. “Got a thing for monsters?”

The question is startling, nearly as embarrassing as _you liked it_ is, and when the silence stretches out, Richie doesn’t fall prey to his usual impulse to fill it, leaving Eddie no choice. “No,” he says haltingly, _finally_ before he can think on it much more. And then, after another hesitation: “You.”

That tears Richie’s eyes away from the tooth. “What?” he asks, like he really hadn’t heard him, and Eddie’s courage returns to him. He draws in a breath; he sets his shoulders, and turns to look at Richie, properly.

“I mean—I got a thing for you,” Eddie says. It hangs in the air between them as Richie stares, until emboldened, Eddie forges on. “Come here.”

Richie sets the tooth back down on the dresser, and Eddie can tell that he regrets it as soon as he does it; he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “Why?” he asks, finally. 

“I want to kiss you back,” Eddie tells him, something that makes Richie opens his mouth, and then close it again.

He watches Richie swallow. He’s slow to obey—like he’s waiting for a punchline—but eventually, he does, coming to a halt in front of Eddie. He doesn’t flinch when Eddie reaches up to cup his face in his both hands, and he bends when Eddie urges him to so that he can kiss him, just like he’d said. 

It’s a little clumsy, but it’s heated and tender, and Eddie thinks, unprompted: _I’m learning how to kiss Richie_. It’s the best kiss he’s ever had—and next time he kisses him, he’ll be better, and the time after that, even better than that. 

It’s not too quick, but it’s not too long, either—it’s just right. When Eddie breaks it off, Richie’s red-faced, and Eddie’s pretty sure that he’s the same. Richie grins, stupidly, and Eddie does that too, just as Richie’s hands come to rest comfortably on his waist, warm and familiar. 

“Mike’s going to be so thrilled by this, dude,” Richie murmurs, to break the silence. “One of his creepy books was _right_.”

Eddie pulls back a little, startled. “We can’t tell Mike about this. We can’t tell _anyone_ about this.”

Richie’s brow furrows. “How else are we going to know what to do about those eggs I laid in you?”

Eddie goes still. “ _What?”_ he gasps, horrified, at least until Richie’s mouth twitches with a barely restrained smile—and Eddie groans. “Oh, you fucker,” he manages, tipping his head to rest against Richie’s head with a muted thump. “You _asshole_. Not fucking funny.” 

Richie laughs, and winds his arms around Eddie, tucking his head under his chin. “ _Okay_. Alright. Hey,” he says, loosely circling his wrist with the hand behind Eddie’s back, keeping him caged in his embrace, although Eddie has no plans to move, presently. He likes it here. He could fall asleep, like this, upright on his feet, _easy_ , and he shuts his eyes. “Beep beep, Richie. See, I did it to myself. How’s that?”

“The minimum,” Eddie mumbles, already distracted. This closeness to Richie it comes with a rush of comfort. For the first time, he thinks about the _after_ of all of this—what might come next, once they’re finished with this. If they win. Once they do. “What do you think’s going to happen, after all this?” he wonders aloud, pulling back just enough so that he can get a look at Richie’s face. 

Richie looks a little surprised by the question, and he’s quiet at first, before he wagers a guess. “Uh, I mean. I don’t know,” he says. “Anything you want, I guess. That’s what I think.”

Anything he wants! It’s a good answer, Eddie decides, and best of all, it’s also a question that he knows the answer to, already. “I want to kiss you again,” he tells him, and Richie’s face cracks into a grin.

“Oh, man. _Easy_. Any time you want,” Richie tells him. “As much as you want. Whenever you want.”

Like he is now, huddled up against him, Eddie can hear Richie’s heart thumping in his chest: steady, warm, human. They’re not quite at the _after all this_ part yet, but nonetheless, it’s enough to move Eddie to pull him down into another kiss anyway. He’ll just have to call it an early start. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Eddie's polo shirt.](https://www.neimanmarcus.com/p/tom-ford-mens-garment-dyed-tennis-pique-polo-shirt-prod229710207)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Margot's Room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24898231) by [IfItHollers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IfItHollers/pseuds/IfItHollers)




End file.
